In this, his last novel, José Saramago daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocativeThe Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah''s Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Cain, the despised, the murderer, is Saramago''s protagonist.

Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, the trials of Job. The rapacious Queen Lilith takes him as her lover. An old man with two sheep on a rope crosses his path. And again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. "And one thing we know for certain," Saramago writes, "is that they continued to argue and are arguing still."

A startling book-sensual, funny-in all ways a fitting end to Saramago''s extraordinary career.

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Cain

The following ISBNs are associated with this title:

ISBN - 10: 0547419899

ISBN - 13: 9780547419893

About the Book

Saramago's "Cain" is a dramatic retelling of the biblical story of Cain and Abel. 176 pp. 50,000 print.

Read from the Book

1 When the lord, also known as god, realized that adam and eve, although perfect in every outward aspect, could not utter a word or make even the most primitive of sounds, he must have felt annoyed with himself, for there was no one else in the garden of eden whom he could blame for this grave oversight, after all, the other animals, who were, like the two humans, the product of his divine command, already had a voice of their own, be it a bellow, a roar, a croak, a chirp, a whistle or a cackle. In an excess of rage, surprising in someone who could have solved any problem simply by issuing another quick fiat, he rushed over to adam and eve and unceremoniously, no half-measures, stuck his tongue down the throats of first one and then the other. From the texts which, over the centuries, have provided a somewhat random record of those remote times, be it of events that might, at some future date, be awarded canonical status and others deemed to be the fruit of apocryphal and irredeemably heretical imaginations, it is not at all clear what kind of tongue was being referred to here, whether the moist, flexible muscle that moves around in the buccal cavity and occasionally outside it too, or the gift of speech, also known as language, that the lord had so regrettably forgotten to give them and about which we know nothing, since not a trace of it remains, not even a heart engraved on the bark of a tree, accompanied by some sentimental message, something along the lines of I love eve

From the Publisher

"Suitably disturbing-and a pleasure to read." -The Scotsman

In this, his last novel, Jos&#233; Saramago daringly reimagines the characters and narratives of the Old Testament, recalling his provocativeThe Gospel According to Jesus Christ. His tale runs from the Garden of Eden, when God realizes he has forgotten to give Adam and Eve the gift of speech, to the moment when Noah''s Ark lands on the dry peak of Ararat. Cain, the despised, the murderer, is Saramago''s protagonist.

Condemned to wander forever after he kills his brother Abel, Cain makes his way through the world in the company of a personable donkey. He is a witness to and participant in the stories of Isaac and Abraham, the destruction of the Tower of Babel, Moses and the golden calf, the trials of Job. The rapacious Queen Lilith takes him as her lover. An old man with two sheep on a rope crosses his path. And again and again, Cain encounters a God whose actions seem callous, cruel, and unjust. He confronts Him, he argues with Him. "And one thing we know for certain," Saramago writes, "is that they continued to argue and are arguing still."

A startling book-sensual, funny-in all ways a fitting end to Saramago''s extraordinary career.

About the Author

JOS&#201; SARAMAGO &#40;1922-2010&#41; was the author of many novels, among themBlindness, All the Names, Baltasar and Blimunda,andThe Year of the Death of Ricardo Reis.In 1998 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Editorial Reviews

"Cain''s vagabond journey builds to a stunning climax that, like the book itself, is a fitting capstone to a remarkable career."-Publishers Weekly, starred

"Saramago transforms familiar stories boldly, but with an intricate respect for their power and for the mysterious power of storytelling itself. Far from merely inverting the biblical tales or turning them inside out, he folds and refolds them in a prismatic, shadowly light."-Robert Pinsky, New York Times Book Review